Blog Tour: Win a Copy of A Single Breath

Published April 3, 2014 | By Laura

A Single Breath by Lucy Clarke – we have three copies to give away.

Thanks to Lucy and the lovely people at Harper, we have three copies of A Single Breath to give away.

Harper, March 2014.

About the book:

When Eva’s husband Jackson tragically drowns, she longs to meet his estranged family. The journey takes her to Jackson’s brother’s doorstep on a remote Tasmanian island. As strange details about her husband’s past begin to emerge, memories of the man she married start slipping through her fingers like sand, as everything she ever knew and loved about him is thrown into question. Now she’s no longer sure whether it was Jackson she fell in love with – or someone else entirely…

To enter: Continue reading →

A Single Breath Blog Tour – The Places That Inspired The Novel

Published April 3, 2014 | By Laura

A Single Breath by Lucy Clarke.

We are happy to welcome Lucy Clarke to Novel Kicks. As part of her blog tour for her second novel, A Single Breath, she tells us about the places that inspired the novel.

I first visited Tasmania in 2011, and fell in love with its wild beauty and its remote shacks. I knew I wanted to set my next novel there, so once I had the loose plot line in place, I returned the following winter on a research trip. I spent an incredible month doing a recce of the island, working out where specific events in the novel would take place, as well interviewing many locals, including two fascinating marine biologists. While I was there, I also learnt to scuba dive, which gave me a beautiful insight into the underwater world, and helped me write the freediving scenes within the novel.

Here are a selection of photos from my research trip, which inspired the story of A Single Breath.

A real Tassie shack! A bit more rustic than Eva’s

My husband and friends preparing fish on a gutting bench like Saul’s

A graceful sea dragon similar to the one Eva and Saul see while freediving

The Cape Bruny lighthouse inspried the scene where Callie takes Eva to visit a lighthouse on Eva’s wedding anniversary

Exploring the wild beaches of Bruny island

Hiking with my husband near the cape where the bushfire happens

Learning to scubadive – my first glimpse of the underwater world in Tasmania

Over-excited by all the wild Tasmanian beauty!

My perfect choice of creative fuel – a berry muffin and clotted cream. Heaven!

Writing on the beach

A Single Breath Blog Tour – Review

Published April 3, 2014 | By Laura

A Single Breath by Lucy Clarke

Eva and Jackson are married, happy and in love but when, on a trip to Dorset, Jackson falls into the sea and drowns, Eva’s life is shattered. She knows that she can’t live without him. She decides to go to Tasmania, where Jackson grew up to meet his family, friends – the people who knew him as well as she does but when she arrives, she starts to find out more about Jackson’s past and that things are never as they seem.

From the first chapter, I knew this book was going to make me cry and I was right. Eva looses everything that she loves in one moment and the tone of the book really helps convey the grief she is feeling in an honest way. As a character, she’s fairly lost and doesn’t know what to do in order to get to the end of each day and I really did empathise with her. I wanted to give her a hug. We can all relate to loss in some way.

There were moments of this book that were truly heart-breaking (hence the making me cry part,) and I really wanted to know what happened at the end. I finished the book both Continue reading →